


Yellow Paint

by PsychicBananaSplit



Series: after klaus got out of the mausoleum [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Art, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death, Depression, Dragons, Flowers, Green apples, I mean, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kinda, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Violence, Nostalgia, Past Character Death, Rainbows, References to Depression, Talking, Temporary Character Death, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Trees, Vincent Van Gogh - Freeform, Violence, Violins, Yellow Paint, but still, don't actually eat yellow paint guys, it was a myth, talk of art, talking about death, the ocean, tiger lilies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 20:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19363741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicBananaSplit/pseuds/PsychicBananaSplit
Summary: The tale has it, that Vincent Van Gogh ate yellow paint to make him happier.He didn’t, but that’s not the point. He believed that eating yellow paint would make his insides brighter, chase away the darkness. The sadness.Not totally batshit, if you ask me.~Klaus Hargreeves, at some point in his saddened, lacking-yellow life.





	Yellow Paint

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaAAAAAA  
> i was gone for a long time, and i'm sorry for that. i've been moving to another house and i haven't had much time on my computer, as i want to spend time with my friends before i can't see them every day.   
> anyway, enough depressing stuff, i have seven different stories going on (including my personal book), so, there's that. prepare for lots of content.  
> oh, and, before the month ends, happy pride month!

The world is in shades of red.

You know all about red. Blood, roses, cherry-flavored candies and cherry-flavored lips. 

Also, dragons.

Legend has it that dragons don’t exist. They do, but that’s not the point. The fire-breathing-scaled-skin-birds, the village-destroying-beasts, maybe not, but they do exist, they do breath, and they do destroy. They fly higher than the skies and they can drop lower than the depths of Hell.

Everyone has a dragon, and Klaus’ dragon is himself. He’s passionate, he’s angry. He’s ready to fucking fly, and he’s ready to fucking drop at the same time. 

Red-hot pain burst from the bridge of his nose when Hazel punched him. Red bursts of light flickered in-and-out of his vision when he kissed Ben for the first time, red bursts of light flickered in-and-out of his vision when a grenade went off right beside him (and he survived). Red-hot anger flooded through him when they traveled to the past and had to see dear ol’ Reggie’s face again. But a nice burn replaced it, instead of boiling in his gut it was setting aflame his heart, when he touched Ben for the first time in thirteen years. When he saw Dave for the first time since he died.

If Klaus had a dollar for every time the color red was paired with heat, then he would be rich and retired, and he doesn’t even have a job!

Guess that’s why fire was colored red-orange-yellow by God herself.

And, yes, he did talk to her. She changes her form every day; the first time (that he remembers) she was in the body of a kid. Nine, maybe ten? The second time she was a fifty-year-old woman. No joke.

God is like fire. She’s fierce, she’s loyal. She believes in what she does, but at the last minute she can wipe everything to dust and dirt. Also, she’s a few trillion-years-old. She knows her stuff.

Of course, red is the first side of Klaus one would see. Obviously, Klaus is not God.

 

Orange is a little more difficult.

Leaves during the fall, late sunsets on a summer evening. Tiger lilies.

Ben likes tiger lilies, Klaus remembers. 

A week before he died, he requested: “Grow tiger lilies by my grave, Klaus.”

Klaus replied: “You’re not dead yet.”

Ben softens his eyes: “We’re all going to die soon, anyway. Just keep it in mind.”

Looking back on it, orange must have been Ben’s favorite color. 

It’s a very Ben color. Symbolizing creativity, success, encouragement and expression. The library’s light catching Ben’s eye just right, or sneaking out of the mansion to jump in piles of leaves with him during October, baking pumpkin pies with him and Mom, growing tiger lilies by his grave in the glow of his cigarette. 

The tiger lilies look sad and droopy now, and going into the past, they don’t even exist. But he’ll grow them again.

Tiger lilies make Klaus sad. Depressed beyond saving. Physically-feeling-sick depressed, tired-after-eighteen-damn-hours-of-sleep depressed. Not the kind of depressed he’ll kill himself over, because he can’t even breathe without having to exert all of his energy.

Klaus could write paragraphs upon paragraphs of just the color orange and Ben and tiger lilies. Now isn’t the time.

 

Yellow. Yellow, yellow, yellow. Lemons, sunflowers, peanut M&Ms that Klaus would shoplift for Ben and Vanya.

Vanya reminds him of the color yellow. It’s ironic, that she’s the most socially reclusive out of all of them and she’s yellow. Maybe it’s because of Van Gogh.

The tale has it, that Vincent Van Gogh ate yellow paint to make him happier.

He didn’t, but that’s not the point. He believed that eating yellow paint would make his insides brighter, chase away the darkness. The sadness.

If you ask Klaus, it wasn’t a totally crazy idea. Some normal people think crazy things. But Van Gogh wasn’t normal; he was an artist, and all artists are a little strange in themselves. And Vanya is an artist. That’s where the circle comes to a close.

Yellow is a really artistic color, Klaus decides. 

Yellow also comes with the sun, which hurts his eyes more than anything. But the sun chases away the dark; and, god, how he hateshates _ hates  _ dark. One moment he’s fine and the next he wouldn’t remember where he’s at, and the dark is closing in, and it’s suffocating  _ he can’t breath.  _

Yellow is Dave. And, it’s really funny to think of it that way. He sees yellow in his eyes and light in his skin and heat in his touch and, god, how he misses him. He misses yellow, he misses the sun. Because Dave is light and Dave is love and Dave is the sun, and it hurts so good, and just. Just.

Yellow is art. In the same way that it is lemons and sunflowers and packages of stolen peanut M&Ms and Dave.

Yellow is nostalgia.

 

Green is Klaus’ favorite color. Trees, mostly. Deep green forests of wildlife and living, not dead and dwelling. Poison and limes and most sour candies, actually. Though some might have poison in them.

Their father had laid a basket of five green apples and a basket of five red apples in front of all the children. At the end of the day they had to eat either three green apples or two red apples, but here’s the catch; two of the red and three of the green were poisonous. If you ate one with poison, that’s fine, but if you ate two, then, well, you’re as good as dead. Literally. 

Well, being Klaus’ lucky color, he decided to eat three of the green apples. It turns out that he has an unpurposefully large tendency towards bad luck; all three of his apples were poisoned. Of course, their father knew which ones were edible and which ones weren’t, so when Klaus had eaten all three poisonous apples and came out fine, he was more than happy to write about this new development in his journal. 

It also turns out that all of Klaus’ apples were poisoned, and none of the others’ were. 

But nobody ever told him it was a game made for him to lose at until he was packed and moving out of the house. Every game is a game made for him to lose.

Except for life, that is. 

Or maybe he’s already lost. 

To this day he doesn’t touch green apples.

 

Blue is the ocean. 

Ben wanted to go to the ocean. Even after death. He would bug Klaus about not having a driver’s license, and not having enough money for a plane ticket and, therefore, never going to the ocean.

He wanted the salty summer breeze, he wanted the song of water on sand and birds’ wings and he wanted to be out of the  _ house.  _

Blue is the ocean, the sky, the free feeling of suspended air and Diego driving him to an amusement park three hours away for no reason. Blue is familiar, blue is family. 

 

Purple is everyone else. Dark, looming storms over the sea that whip you around with arms of wind, and thunderstorm clouds of bruises on skin. The closets that no-one went into and the places they’ve never been, purple is mystery and longing. Never-ending hallways filled with photographs and paintings of long-lost relatives and missing puzzle pieces. Purple is everything they want to know and everything they don’t want to know. The fog in the forest and the mist of the sea and the eyes of a dragon. The monster under your bed with neon green eyes and yellow claws, but the majestic caged bird with gleaming feathers and a battered soul. 

However much of Klaus is red he is equal parts purple. Bruises and blood and broken bones. 

It’s piano. Beethoven and Bach and Chopin, graceful black-and-whites filling Klaus’ brain with melodies.

Flowers blooming in the springtime rains and being picked for bouquets laid at funerals.

 

Black and white are probably the hardest colors to get a reference of without the other being present. Checkerboards, newspapers, the night sky. Dullness. That’s why they say that the world isn’t black and white; filled with colors of people and identities and personalities. 

Heaven is black and white, so, really, isn’t it the same thing? 

Vintage pictures of themselves and faded gray memories of a loving, warm embrace from their mothers. 

Black is Ben’s eyes, deep pools of onyx and glittering diamond. Black is Diego’s emotions, warm and comforting and protective, a shield of obsidian to the horrors and the hallucinations. Black is Vanya’s violin, dark and mysterious and left entirely to interpretation. But it’s also haunting shadows creeping up in oceans of stone and nameless ghosts and ghostless names. It’s carvings of long-forgotten people in wood and remembrance of spirits and the beings those identities were tied to. 

White is blinding and pure. It’s the first thing you see when you die; a bright star of pearls raining down on your sight and stealing it away. It’s white roses in rain and clear wisps of smoke carried into the air. It’s familiarity. It’s being able to go home at the end of the day to see Ben, not dead, very much alive, and being able to hold him. It’s dragons and the ocean and nostalgia and tiger lilies.

And Klaus can live with that.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
